hello seattle, i am a gleeful traveller revelling in your free wifi~
HIIII INTERNET. I MISS YOU A LOT BUT I AM HAVING AN AWESOME TIME DOING AWESOME THINGS like following pigeons around SHUT UP I MAKE MY OWN FUN. Am perhaps slightly high on travel because I bloody love flying and airports and everything that goes with them, especially when something seems to have dissuaded the TSA Goon Squad from coming in today.
NOT SO AWESOME: saying goodbye to Anna. AWESOME: SAYING HELLO TO KYRA IN A FEW SHORT HOURS. (I say "short" because four hours has nothing on two years oh lordy how has it ever been that long.) ALSO AWESOME: well-cooked vegetables, international food (in the last several days have had Japanese, Indian -- I LOVE CHICKPEAS WHO KNEW -- and French (THERE WAS WIIIINE and creme brulee and bread and I had rabbit and I nearly died)), exploring a Philadelphia market and having tea and pastries at a place with the infinitely delightful name of Flying Monkey Patisserie (we bought some of their pins because SO CUTE), trawling through two bookstores wherein I sort of kind of bought five books (most of them were $1.50 okay and now I have a replacement pocket Eliot to carry everywhere since my dad's old one disintegrated), free wine at the hostel, playing Bananagrams and having hilarious discussions of folklore and how sometimes people in folktales are REALLY DUMB (everyone involved in the death of my boyfriend Baldr I AM LOOKING AT YOU), quoting the beginning of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" as we left the hostel -- "Let us go then, you and I when the morning is spread against the sky like a patient etherised upon a table!", TEN THOUSAND OTHER THINGS I HAVE FORGOTTEN AT THE MOMENT BECAUSE I AM ADDLED WITH CAFFEINE AND TRAVEL ADRENALINE AND HUNGER.
Magical things: mountains like the hand of a god had crumpled the earth; a bird flying past our plane; a lost pigeon in the train station; seeing the shadow of our plane on the clouds, ringed in iridescent light!; a mountaintop penetrating the clouds; cities that look like you could scoop them up in your palm -- the world below you somehow never looks far away, only miniature and intricate -- smiling at people and being smiled at in return; the great window full of clouds and airplanes taking off in the Seattle airport food court; playing Owl City as I left the plane; making mental notes of fellow travellers with particularly fab shoes; seeing humans who aren't solely uber-normal-white-umpteenth-generation-Slavic-descended-Northwestern-Pennsylvania-folk-who-never-leave-the-gorram-area; the sudden jolt of weightlessness when the airplane leaves the ground; SEEING MY BEST FRIEND AND ONE OF MY FAVOURITE PLACES IN a FEW HOURS. Yeah, you know what, I am good.